High School Basketball Star Turns Out to Be A 30 Year Old Man

Jonathan Nicola, a 6-foot-9 refuge from Sudan, played for Catholic Central High School in Windsor was really a “man among boys.” He dominated the court and started getting noticed by some college teams. But it turns out that Nicola was wasn’t a teenager after all but 30 years old and had apparently lied to get into the country.

Dead Spin reports that Nicola is accused of lying about his age to obtain a student visa. The South Sudanese man has been held since April 15 by Canada’s immigration services, and in a hearing last week, testified that he truly did not know his real age, and even his mother wasn’t able to tell him. The transcript of the hearing was obtained by the Toronto Star:

“I aways keep asking what is the specific age that I was born, and she has told me that she could not remember,” he told the April 19 hearing.

“Over (in South Sudan) . . . not every year we study . . . we always keep moving to different schools, and over there, they do not ask your age. They do not ask you nothing,” Nicola said.
Nicola said he had been approached by a “coach Steyn” who promised to get him a student visa to play basketball in Canada, and that Steyn handled all the allegedly fraudulent paperwork.

“I told him, no, I was not born in 1998. I told him that I am too young for 1998. I’m not in 1998. Then he told me, ‘No, you go back ask my mother, ask my mother how old am I.’ And my mother she do not even remember. She told me 1993, 1990,” Nicola said at the earlier hearing.

“So I went back and this guy he just do me the paper . . . he did the whole papers. He did everything.”

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